On sacred Maui, I walked from shore
into the Pacific through deep sand,
the surf knocked me over.
I crawled like a turtle back to the beach,
where I saw thousands of 2, 3, 5 inch coral,
Buddhist temples in ruin, a congregation of naked
and half naked bathers. In a palm tree forest
I heard sutras, windy prayers spoken,
K, vowels, L, vowel Gods’ names. I swear in the Maui surf
in a Dublin accent I heard someone say,
“Cromwell wanted all the harps in Ireland destroyed.”
I looked up at the sky where automobiles
must turn on their headlights when they drive
above the clouds on a road to a volcano.
I do not know how to speak to a volcano,
but fire welcomes me. Is there something
about my eyes and hair? Another voice said,
“Thou shall not swim in holy water.”
I replied, “I’m a sinner, a mainlander,
I also believe in you, my soul, the other I am.”
Angels fly about me in and out of the volcano
with wings of ice that do not thaw into rain.
I think I heard a lizard say, “Respect! Respect!”
I said, “Of course.” The cedars and eucalyptus
have the same root, the same God.
Lying across holy coral I consider
why I was knocked over by Maui’s surf.
I am unbalanced—why don’t I fall when I dance?
When I was 9, I crawled and breaststroked
across the distant Hudson, rhythmically spitting out
salt and doggerel—then backstroke and freestyle
I made my way across the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa.
Reader, I can hold my breath longer than a bullfrog
that can stay in coitus for 3 days and 3 nights,
unless swallowed by a little blue heron
or walleyed pike, without the distraction of ideas.
How many afternoons have I dived into the Atlantic
to swim with whales beyond the Montauk lighthouse
that keeps freighters like me off the granite cliffs.
A visitor returning to the City of Angels,
I lost my way, went to the wrong airport.
I was not distracted by ideas: a porter told me
after he asked, “Do you have rocks in your bag?”
and I said, “Yes”—the percentage of Hawaii’s children
given public school education is close to Mississippi.
I mentioned this to a beautiful Maui white lady,
she said, “That’s politics.”
Despite sacred forests and mountains, I was wrong:
Maui is not sacred, a place of equal opportunity.
I hold my trousers up with my belly of statistics.
In the 21st Century, every sacred place
in the universe has public education.
A Chinese lady told me in Hawaii
mainland homeless and unemployables gather
under the palm trees where it is warm and beautiful,
night and day. No books, no piano.
I write here and there poems not yet abandoned.
I have a flock of them, fledglings barely feathered,
some old birds that can fly a few yards
into the next tree or yard—hop.
A poem can change to a match just struck,
invisible flame when held up to the sun.
I plead guilty: I hold onto the match too long,
it burns and blisters my fingers. Lingering
on what I do not know is closer to truth.
I stand up, my trousers fall and I’m stark naked:
my privates are the bridges across the Hudson,
East and North rivers, under whose supports
the homeless sleep—I need a fig leaf,
12% of New York City’s children
who attend public schools are homeless.
Reader, what you hear out of my mouth
is not a cry of despair, it’s a B-flat.